"
"I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a
model wife,--and here she comes!"
Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies
floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael's Hours, or a
Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or _patera_, Miss Damer
brandished Peter Skerrett's pocket-pistol.
Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little
anxiously at his pale face.
"Now, M.D.," says Peter, "you have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and
dose our patient. Now, then,--
"'Hebe, pour free!
Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew,
That Styx, the detested,
No more he may view.'"
"Thanks, Hebe!"
Wade said, continuing the quotation,--
"I quaff it!
Io Paean, I cry!
The whiskey of the Immortals
Forbids me to die."
"We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken
heads," said Fanny. "But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident,
Mr. Wade, as an adventure."
Miss Damer certainly did seem gay and exhilarated.
"I enjoy it," said Wade. "I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell
on my crown. I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones."
"I have been waiting to claim my place among your old friends," Mrs.
Skerrett said, "ever since Peter told me you were one of his models."
She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally
fascinated Wade.
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